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Francis Ford Coppola's YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH screens in New York!
SPOILER ALERT !!
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a review sent in by a loyal NY spy named Hogue who saw the Museum of the Moving Image screening of Francis Ford Coppola's first film in a dog's age: YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH. It's not a glowingly positive review, but it does paint he picture of a good film with some flaws. Hope you folks enjoy it!
Hi Harry. I saw that no one has written in, so I thought I would give my impressions of Coppola's new film, Youth Without Youth. The screening was held last night at the Paris Theater here in New York and sponsored by The Museum of the Moving Image. Coppola introduced the movie to a packed house. He spoke (as he has in several interviews) about his need to return to more personal movies after directing so many commercial ones. He was greatly intriguied by the source material, a novel by Miorcea Eliade that details the adventures of an old professor who is hit by lightning and becomes younger and smarter. He asked if anyone had ever drank his wine (he owns vineyards) and most of the crowd raised their hands. He thanked them and called them Executive Producers of the film.
The movie immediately establishes itself as nothing like Coppola's done before. The credits run at the beginning of the movie like in the old Hollywood, for example. In the beginning, we see a heavily made-up Tim Roth bemoaning his inability to finish his life's work, a book that deals with the origin of languange. The professor speaks some of the hardest known Oriental languages, like Mandarin and Sanskrit. When his character is suddenly hit by lightning in Romania, he is grotesquely burned and spends part of the movie recovering. The combination of the bandaged man, jumping back and forth in time, and hallucinatory style of the film reminds one of a Gothic English Patient. But soon Tim Roth's meditations on time, love, and language pull the film in its own direction.
When the Nazis get wind of the professor and his miracle reverse-aging they go after him, using various methods of persuasion. They are working on a similar experiment but are only working with horses (Godfather, anyone?). Eventually, Tim Roth flees. He witnesses the horrors of war from Switzerland, going from town to town changing identities as his past catches up with him in more ways than one. He continues to work on his book as his facility with language grows. He even invents his own language. Finally, the last part of the movie concerns itself with a love affair between Roth and Alexandra Maria Lara, who's got her own set of language and aging issues.
On the whole, the movie is very well-made. It's lush and erotic, made with a distinctly European art pallet. Unfortunately, it's difficult to connect with the movie because it's several movies rolled up into one. At various times, the movie is a supernatural thriller, spy movie, romance, melodrama, and meditation on cognitive perception. There are about a dozen languages spoken and the plot twists (which no doubt work in the novel) are downright laughable in a movie where we're supposed to care about what happens to this cursed old man. The meditations on reality and our perceptions of it (which are the core of a handful of very boring scenes) come across as the ramblings of a drunk European you'd meet in a hostel.
And, I'm not alone in my reactions. Based on conversations with other people in the audience afterwards, no one was quite sure what they had just seen. If you like eye candy, I suppose you'll like it. But unfortunately it was hard to muster the enthusiasm that! Coppola has for it.
I hope to god, though, that Coppola makes more of these. It's still better than anything he's done in a while and younger directors could still learn a thing or two from him. Incidentally, there was a Q & A with Tim Roth, Alexandra Maria Lara, and legendary sound mixer/editor Walter Murch. But someone in our party was feeling ill and we left right after the screening. I'd be curious to hear other people's reactions. Call me Cable Hogue.
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...and it was AWESOME!
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sweet!
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I seem to be saying that a lot lately.
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FANTASTIC!
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He makes totally different films from Coppola.
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I'm glad Coppola's making movies again. The last ones I remember him directing were Jack and the Rainmaker. I hope he had a lot of fun and knocks out another one soon after this!
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You wanna talk real filmmaking? How about Aliens, Terminator, Abyss? They're worth every Jack, Peggy Sue got married or Rainmaker of the world. Except for Tucker, and some tidbits of Cotton Club, Coppola blows on a surprisingly regular basis since more than 2 decades.
Speaking of which, Youth without youth opened a few weeks ago where I live and I was literally ashamed for the guy when walking out. Tim Roth is good, that's the only thing I remember from this absolute trainwreck. I hope the motherfucking burglar who robbed his laptop containing Tetro's data will see this flick. Maybe he would hand it back to Coppola out of embarassment. I would.
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is reminding me a lot of the press hype for EYES WIDE SHUT in a troubling way. but this doesn't have two married, insane mannequins as its stars, so maybe it will be good.
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Where else can you find an Aliens v. Peggy Sue Got Married debate? Different movies, different audiences. Both great in their own ways.
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but I had to defend the cause. My bad.
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Completely incomprehensible from start to finish. Just awful, and this is coming from one of the so-called 'executive producers'.
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FRANCIS COPPOLA should do as his nephew (Nic Cage) and for every serious project (artsy, if you will) he should do a 'Hollywood' commercial project like he did with DRACULA. Man!, that movie's visuals are so great! I would love to see a COPPOLA HORROR project, something very Gothic...something like SLEEPY HOLLOW... He would rule that way. His visuals in bigger than life scenery are impeccable (Apocalypse, Dracula, etc) are usually great but they get lost in tiny drama projects like the RAINMAKER, JACK, etc.
FRANCIS, DO A GREAT AMERICAN GOTHIC HORROR FILM! -
Does sound up it's own ass shit though! 'Hit by lightnin he starts to Age backwards'!?! would be better as a nocturnal Adam Sandler Golfing comedy with Nazi's! Sandler the aging golf pro gets stuck by Lectricity one night on the 18th green and falls in the hole as he shrinks to the size of a newborn fetus that can still wisecrack. As he's drowning in the rain filled cup Along comes wise old Green Keeper Sean Connery who takes him back to his bothy and nurses him back to health with some hot mulled wine before heading off across amerika in a motorbike and sidecar fuelled chase with thems pesky Hitlers!FRANCIS,DO A GREAT AMERICAN COMEDY ROAD MOVIE!
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Stick a fork in him.
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I thought we had established that the initial haters were out of their mind. Time has proven how great that film is.
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I was utter shite. Really heartbreakingly bad.
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you don't need three hours to tell me that everybody fucks, and that it is ok that everybody fucks. kubrick could have had "EVERYBODY FUCKS -- AND THAT'S OK" carved on his grave instead and the impact would have been about the same. actually, that would have been way, way cooler than Eyes Wide Shut was.
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half of it anyhow. It sort of feels like Hearts of Darkness.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDMN9Qdgl5A -
Spellbinding thriller about a man caught in the middle of a sentance. In Esperanto.
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when did i say i expected Eyes Wide Shut to be a lot of hot fucking or something? i didn't go in expecting anything except to see kubrik's last movie, and i didn't like what i got. christ almighty.
i'm real excited about coppola being back and challenging his viewers, though... my fingers are crossed that it will all add up to something when it's over.
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